Babylon Sisters Read online

  The fact was easy: We have a seventeen-year-old daughter. The offer of a meeting was easy because unless they both agreed, it never had to happen. It was the explanation part that was, as my father used to say, kicking my ass like I stole something. I knew I had to explain, but how? For a long time, I thought it all went bad when I decided not to have the abortion and I didn’t tell B.J., but I think now it was before that. It was when I tried to make the decision not to have her based on who I thought he was and who he expected me to be. I don’t remember asking myself what I wanted until they called my name at the clinic, and I couldn’t step forward.

  Having Phoebe was something I did because of who I really was, and I’ve never regretted it for a single second, but still needed an introduction to the subject at hand. I looked at Phoebe’s picture on the freezer door as I took the coffee out to make a fresh pot and tried to imagine the exchange.

  Him: What a lovely young woman. Who is she?

  Me: Oh, that’s our daughter, Phoebe. She is lovely, isn’t she?

  That was no good. I tried again.

  Him: What a lovely young woman. Who is she?

  Me: You remember that procedure you couldn’t go to with me? Well, I couldn’t go either.

  That was even worse.

  Him: What a lovely young woman. Who is she?

  Me: B.J., we need to talk.

  The worst opening line in the history of relationships. This was what I got for not watching soap operas. Those girls know how to confess every possible transgression, from extramarital affairs to switching babies at birth, without even breaking a sweat. How do they do it?

  The phone rang as I took down two cups from the cabinet over the sink. “Hello?”

  I was glad to hear B.J.’s voice on the other end. It was almost ten thirty. After eleven is too late for coffee and true confessions on a weeknight.

  “Cat? I’m sorry to be so late calling.”

  “That’s okay. I just put the coffee on.”

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “Louis just reworked the whole front page.”

  Phoebe’s photograph smiled back at me from the refrigerator door, and I felt a wave of frustration. Damn! It was harder to tell this secret than it had been to keep it. But B.J. didn’t know that. He thought he was just coming by for coffee, not to be a major player on Days of Our Lives.

  “How much longer do you think he’ll be?”

  “There’s really no telling,” he said. “Can we get together tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . .

  “Sure,” I said, as the smell of coffee I wasn’t going to drink filled the kitchen. Now that was pathetic. Amelia’s question bounced around in my brain: What do you want to happen? I knew exactly what I wanted to happen. “How about dinner? I’ll cook.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said.

  “I want to,” I said. “Besides, how else can we be sure we won’t run into any more of Ezola’s spies?”

  “Good thinking,” he said. “Am I still meeting Miriam at your place at four?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “She’s expecting you.” She had been so excited to hear that there were new leads on her sister.

  “Thanks, Cat,” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it tonight.”

  “Tell your boss I’m going to send a union organizer down there if he doesn’t stop these terrible hours you’re working.”

  “I’ll be the first one to sign up.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice, and I was glad I hadn’t been petulant about his change of plans. I wondered if it was possible to be in love with a man and develop a vocabulary free of the responses that make every conversation a minefield of hurt feelings, half-truths, and dashed expectations. The more I sidestepped all that and went right to the truth, the better I felt.

  “Good night,” I said.

  “Good night.”

  There was no need to waste a whole pot of coffee, so I poured myself a cup. It wasn’t until I went back to the refrigerator for the cream that I realized I was going to have to take Phoebe down one more time. B.J. was coming here at four to interview Miriam. I couldn’t leave the pictures around for that.

  Him: What a lovely young woman. Who is she?

  Me: That’s our daughter, Phoebe, but go on and do this interview and I’ll fill you in later.

  That would never do. I’d have to put them away, find some reason for him to leave the house for a little while after he talked to Miriam, put them back up, and then greet him for dinner like they’d been there all the time, or confess I’d been taking them down and putting them back like a set designer who couldn’t make up her mind. Neither option particularly appealed to me, but I figured Miriam deserved B.J.’s undivided attention tomorrow and de-Phoebe-izing the house one more time was the only way to guarantee she got it.

  So I put down my coffee and apologized to my daughter one more time with the guilty parent’s favorite rationalization: This hurts me more than it hurts you. She didn’t believe me for a second.

  49

  Sam called to say he was looking forward to talking to B.J. and to complimenting Louis on the big splash the series was already making.

  “It’s all anybody’s talking about,” he said in the admiring tones of a man who recognizes a creative use of the media when he sees it. “Davenport can’t show his face in public.”

  Quincy Davenport was the businessman whose slum property B.J. had featured in his story. After it appeared, Channel Two Action News had sent a film crew to interview the family B.J. had featured, and while they were on camera, a rat scurried acoss the walk behind them.

  “He ought to show his face in public by cleaning up those houses he’s renting,” I said.

  “That’s the bottom line, I guess,” Sam agreed. “Maybe what he needs is a cadre of Mandeville Maids to put it right. Think there might be a story in that?”

  I could see it now. A cadre of white-uniformed women descending on Davenport’s little shotgun houses and emerging a few hours later, leaving behind a spotless new environment for some family other than their own.

  “There might be a human-interest story if you’re going to donate their services,” I said.

  “Donate their services? Did you forget everything I said the other night about being in business?”

  “That’s exactly my point. If it’s about doing good, they might run it for free. If it’s about making money, they make you pay for it.”

  I could hear him chuckling, and it sounded seductive, although I don’t think he meant it to. “Point well taken. It was just a thought.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, glad he had backed off a bad idea so easily. “I’ll give you some talking points before you meet with B.J.”

  “B.J.?”

  I blushed even though he couldn’t see me. “Burghardt Johnson. We used to call him B.J. in college. I’m sorry.”

  “I see,” Sam said. “Well, tell B.J. I’m raring to go, and if slumlords are what he’s chasing, I’ve got some stories that’ll curl his hair. Is he still looking for leads?”

  “I don’t know. You can ask him when you two talk.”

  “I just might do that,” he said. “Make sure I have those talking points the day before I need them, will you?”

  “I will,” I said, but he was already gone.

  50

  When Miriam arrived at the house for her interview, she immediately noticed the absence of Phoebe’s photographs and it completely freaked her out. She was neatly dressed in a dark skirt and a white blouse that made her look like a schoolgirl. Her awful wig had been traded for a gray fedora during an afternoon excursion to my favorite vintage clothing store, but when I commented on it, she barely acknowledged the compliment.

  “Where’s your daughter?” she said, her voice full of worry.

  “She’s fine,” I said, kicking myself. Why hadn’t I thought about Miriam’s reaction to my sudden housecleaning? “It’s just that . . .” Just that what? “It�
�s just that when I have business appointments at the house, I like to keep things strictly professional.”

  She looked even more confused. “You don’t want them to see her picture?”

  “It’s not so much that I don’t want them to see her picture. It’s just that I like to keep my personal life separate from my professional life.”

  This from a woman whose office was nestled in a back bedroom so she could look around her computer and see her collard greens growing. Miriam was unconvinced, and there was a little worry wrinkle between her eyebrows.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “As soon as you’re finished with your interview and Mr. Johnson goes home, I’ll put them all back where they were. You can help me. Okay?”

  She nodded with her first smile of the day. “She reminds me a little bit of my Etienne. Not the way she looks, but the way she smiles. When I walked in and she wasn’t where she always is, all of a sudden, just like that, I guess I just didn’t want her to be gone, too.”

  Too.

  “She’s not going anywhere,” I said. “Trust me.”

  I’d be glad when all this subterfuge was over. I’m not cut out for it, and trying to learn on the job was truly working my nerves.

  By the time B.J. arrived at a house with plenty of newly empty wall space, and I introduced him to Miriam, she was enviably poised, considering how stressful the situation must have been for her. I had told her that B.J. was a friend, as well as a great reporter who wanted to help us locate Etienne. She had read his first piece in the Sentinel, and even looked up some of his older work online.

  “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,” B.J. said as we gathered in the living room. I sat next to Miriam on the couch, and B.J. took a chair and flipped open his notebook.

  “You have written about my country many times,” she said quietly. “That makes it easier.”

  He smiled. “Good. Can we start with the night you and your sister left Haiti?”

  Miriam looked at me. This was not the first time she had told her story, but did it ever get easier to conjure up a nightmare? I took her hand and held it tight.

  “Take your time,” B.J. said. “If you need to stop, we’ll stop.”

  “No,” she said, firmly. “I will tell you everything I know, and you will tell me everything you know so we can find my sister. Are you ready?”

  B.J. nodded, and Miriam took a deep breath. “My mama told us not to be afraid. . . .”

  51

  For the next two hours, B.J. guided Miriam through a telling of her story that included details I’d never heard her share before. Her voice trembled a few times, and once she choked up just a little when she talked about the day her sister didn’t come back like she was supposed to, but she never broke down, and B.J.’s gentle questions never pushed her too hard or too far. When he finally closed his notebook, Miriam hugged him like a favorite uncle and with a little coaxing, even agreed to have her photograph taken holding the locket picture of Etienne to run beside the story.

  From what he’d discovered in Miami and what Miriam had told him, B.J. knew there was a good chance someone had seen Etienne the last time this group of women came through. All it would take was for one person to come forward, but that worked both ways. Somebody could come forward who didn’t want the information to get out, too, so we decided that Miriam would move in with me for a couple of weeks after the story ran. She’d be safe in West End in case the story flushed out some bad guys.

  The session had run longer than we thought it would, and when Miriam realized what time it was, she was in an immediate panic at the thought of arriving late for her citizenship class. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be a citizen. In spite of everything, she still loved her own country, but she wanted to know she could pass the test if she took it. B.J. offered to give her a ride, since he was driving Louis’s car, and she gratefully accepted.

  I walked B.J. to the door as she gathered up her things. Watching him work, seeing how compassionate he was as he questioned Miriam so gently, made me feel like I could tell him anything and he would understand. “Are we still on for dinner?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll drop Miriam, take Louis his car, and be back in an hour.”

  That was all the time I needed. I hugged Miriam, closed the door, and started upstairs. Dinner preparations could wait until I put Phoebe back where she belonged. I still didn’t know what I was going to say, but I figured something would come to me.

  An hour later, Phoebe’s photographs had been returned to their usual places. Nothing had come to me yet, so I poured myself a glass of wine and went outside to wait for B.J. on the front porch. When I spotted him coming down the street, my mind couldn’t have been blanker. I finished off my wine in three big gulps. He was walking up the front walk and still nothing, so I just smiled.

  “Did she make it on time?”

  “We had five minutes to spare.” He put his foot on the bottom step and smiled back. “And she wanted me to apologize for her leaving so quickly that she didn’t have a chance to help you put your daughter’s pictures back up.”

  The smile froze on my face. B.J.’s expression never changed, but his eyes were watching me intently. “She said to tell you she’d help you first thing tomorrow.”

  And there they went, right out the window. Eighteen years of lies and evasions, all gone in one fell swoop. The weird thing was, I wasn’t scared or nervous like I thought I’d be. The conversation I’d been dreading had begun without any help from me at all. There was nothing to do now but tell him the truth. I stood up.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’ve already taken care of it.”

  Then I reached out and took his hand, opened my front door, and walked him inside to take a look at his daughter.

  52

  There was no need to say anything, or if there was, neither of us knew what. I didn’t try to explain. I just kept hold of his hand and walked him around the house like we were in a museum on Sunday afternoon, pausing before each piece, silently observing, then moving on. When we got to the kitchen and I stopped in front of the refrigerator, where the photographs were of a full-grown woman, he let go of my hand and ran his fingers delicately across Phoebe’s face as if he could read her thoughts like Braille. I could see that he was trembling slightly. Then he closed his eyes and turned away from her and from me.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, feeling the inadequacy of the words even as I said them.

  He just shook his head without turning around. “Thank God,” he said, and his voice sounded strangled and raw. “Thank God! Thank God!”

  He just kept repeating it over and over, real quietly, like he couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d wanted to. I just stood there, not knowing whether to go to him or not. Finally he took a deep breath and turned back to me. His eyes were shining and his face was wet with tears he was trying to wipe away on his sleeve like a kid on the fourth-grade playground.

  “You didn’t do it,” he said.

  I shook my head. “No, I didn’t do it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  There was no anger or accusation in his voice. Just the need to know why. This question was very familiar to me. It was the one I asked myself.

  “You were on your way to Africa,” I said. “I thought you needed your freedom.”

  Tears were still running down his cheeks and his voice had a choking sound. “I needed you.”

  He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down like the weight of his own thoughts was too much to carry. I sat down across from him.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me not to do it?” I whispered.

  He looked at me and shook his head slowly. “Because I thought you needed your freedom,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. “I never wanted you to do it. That’s what I was trying to tell you that night I got so drunk, but it didn’t come out right.”

  My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to come through my ches
t. He never wanted me to do it? “You weren’t making any sense.”

  His eyes looked so sad that I wondered if the sorrow I had seen there on our first night at dinner was something he had taken with him across all that ocean, not something he found when he got there. “I didn’t know how to talk you out of it. I didn’t even know if I had a right to try.”

  In the process of figuring out what we wanted, needed, and had a right to, women had talked men into and out of their paternity rights so many times, nobody knew who had the right to do what when, much less why.

  “Is that why you left?”

  He reached across the table and took my hand, stroking it gently. “I knew I couldn’t go to the clinic and not try to talk you out of what you had already decided. Leaving seemed like the best thing to do.”

  This was beginning to sound like that short story we had to read in high school where the poor husband hocks his watch to buy his beloved wife a comb for her beautiful hair, not knowing that she has cut and sold her hair to buy her beloved a chain for that same prized pocket watch. On Christmas morning, each one recognizes the other’s love reflected in their sacrifice. Except her hair will grow back and he can buy back his watch from the pawnbroker’s window. What we had offered each other in the name of love and freedom was something much more precious and irreplaceable.

  B.J. looked across the table at me. “But I was wrong.”

  “I was, too,” I said. “And we could sit here trading apologies all night, but you know what? In this case, we’re really lucky. Two wrongs turned out to make something that’s not just right. It’s absolutely perfect.”